Favourite Author

Well, after reading Ellie's distress message, I thought it was about time to get blogging. You asked about favourite authors. Mine is Salman Rushdie. I love his mixing of fantasy into reality - but its always done so skillfully that you never really think of the fantasy as fantasy! And his made up words, and tying real history into his fiction - the man is a genius.

When he is about to bring out a new book I ALWAYS pre-order. At the moment I am four chapters into Shalimar the Clown and, as yet, I have not been disappointed. But, the thing with your favourite authors is that you wait ages for a new book to come out and then you consume it in days and its gone and you have to wait another three years or so for another new one! So, this time I am on ration. One chapter every other day - and on the day in between I reread the chapter from the day before. It's fabulous - it means you don't miss a thing and the book lasts that little bit longer.

Just down from Mr Rushdie are Rohinton Mistry and Khushwant Singh and perhaps lying alongside them is also Amitav Ghosh (do I see a pattern emerging?!) All of their books are read within hours of being put on the shelves in our local bookshop (although, saying that, I have to order Khushwant's books from India and then wait to see whether the postal system will deliver them or not - which can be distressing in the extreme!)

After Ellie's blog I'm trying to think of women authors too. Jeanette Winterson is on my list too, although increasingly I am disappointed with her stuff these days. I'm also very eager to read Andrea Levy's next book as I thought Small Island was a masterpiece.

Oh, and of course, I'd love to read Arundhati Roy's next work of fiction, but then she did say that she only had one story in her head and that was The God of Small Things so I suspect I may be waiting quite some time.